The Renaissance Times

In this episode, we explore the dramatic collapse of papal power in 14th-century Italy, tracing how Pope Clement V — a Frenchman installed by the ruthless King Philip IV after the arrest and death of Boniface VIII — relocated the entire papacy to Avignon in 1309, effectively making it a puppet of the French crown. With Italy ungovernable, the Holy Roman Empire in flux, and nations from England to...

BTW – in 1421, Bruno was awarded the world’s first ever patent for invention. The patent describes Bruno as “a man of the most perspicacious intellect, industry and invention,” And this document granted him a patent of monopoly for “some machine or kind of ship, by means of which he thinks he can easily, at any time, bring in any merchandise and load on the river Arno and on any other river...

So what was the magic solution that Bruno brought to the Dome on August 7, 1420? How do you build a dome out of bricks, that curves upwards, with no support, that won’t fall down? Well he actually invented not one, not two, but a handful of new tricks. And this is even BEFORE he invented linear perspective. The first thing I want to talk about is called In Italian – (”Spina di Pesce&#8...

It’s thought that Bruno returned to Florence probably in 1416 or 1417 Which means he was in Rome for 15 years. How did he earn a living? Vasari says he didn’t have to at first. Before he left Florence he sold a small farm that he owned. So he lived off that money for a while. When that ran out he worked as a goldsmith. Vasari states that while in Rome, there wasn’t a single standing classical stru...

When Bruno – or Pippo was he was known to his friends (short for Filippo) went to Rome, after the embarrassment of the Baptistery doors competition, it wasn’t the Rome of Augustus. At its height, Rome’s population was one million people. When Bruno arrived there, it was less than 20,000, thanks to the Black Death of 1348. 1/50th of its heyday. Can you imagine what that would look like? Rome...

After he finished the first set of doors, he was commissioned to make a huge bronze statue of John The Baptist by the same guild – by the cloth merchant’s guild, the Arte di Calimala . –  for the outside wall of Orsanmichele (Orsan-mikele) – (or “Kitchen Garden of St. Michael”) –  another church in Florence. It was the largest statue ever cast in Florence up to...

Anyway – governors of Florence may have had a more immediate reason for selecting this story. The climax of the story emphasizes divine intervention, and we must remember that the Florentines were facing a series of threats from outside forces – we’ll discuss them in later episodes – and had just had another dose of the plague. So at the end of the year, all of the artists handed...

If you’ve ever been to Florence, you’ve no doubt paid a visit to the Duomo, the Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. Known as the Duomo. Well we’re NOT going to be talking about that today. Instead we’re going to be talking about the building right next to it – the Baptistery of St John, one of the most historic and important buildings in Florence. Aka  the B...

So let’s talk about The Decameron . The book’s primary title exemplifies Boccaccio’s fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines two Greek words, δέκα, déka (“ten”) and ἡμέρα, hēméra (“day”), to form a term that means “ten-day [event]”. Ten days is the period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales. It was set during the Blac...

Let’s talk about the Filocolo The title means “the one struck down by love”. It is considered to be the first novel of Italian literature written in prose. Florio, son of the King of Spain, and Biancifiore, an orphan. They grow up together, get separated, have a lot of adventures, then he searches for her and finds her and they are reunited. The story influenced Chaucer and Shakespeare...

Let’s talk about the other, slightly more creepy and rapey father of the Renaissance. For books in the vernacular to appear in considerable quantities, there must be a demand for them. There must exist a class of people who have had enough education to be considered literate and to have an interest in reading for leisure, but who are more fluent in the vernacular than in Latin. In Italy, the...

“Africa” became alternately Petrarch’s obsession and his revulsion, and he left it incomplete at his death. Despite Petrarch’s best efforts to conceal his occupation, word of the Africa spread quickly. It was not long before Petrarch’s fame reached the court of King Robert of Naples, a ruler considered by his contemporaries to be enlightened and studious. Robert gave Petrar...

Now that his parents are dead, Petrarch decides to dump law and become a scholar and a poet. But you couldn’t make a living as a poet in the early 14th century. So he took minor orders with the church. In the Catholic Church, you have the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and simple priest), deacon and subdeacon, and the four minor orders, that of acolyte, exorcist, lector and por...

I want to pick up our story in the year 1302 To talk about a man called Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo. Well actually I want to talk about his SON. But we’ll get there. And to get there, we’re going to need to duck in and out of the 800 years we’ve skipped since our last episodes. So hang in there. Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo was a notary in FLORENCE. A contract lawyer. At some point in 1302, he was fa...

Justin was born near modern Skopje, in the fake Macedonia. He started off life as a peasant and a swineherd. But he rose through the ranks of the army and ultimately became Emperor, in spite of the fact he was illiterate and almost 70 years old at the time of accession. So there you go Ray. There’s hope for you yet. He managed this because at the time of the death of the previous emperor, Anastasi...

In 423, Honorius, the son of Theodosius who ruled the Western part of the empire, died, of natural causes. He had ruled for 30 years. He was only 38 years old. Over the next 50 years, the Western empire had a 11 emperors. Some last for years – others lasted only months. The last emperor of the West is usually considered to be Flavius Romulus Augustus. Also known as Romulus Augustulus –...

When the Greek author Herodotus, the ‘father of history’, sat down to write the first history he declared that his aim was to make ‘inquiries’ – historias, in Greek – into the relations between the Greeks and the Persians. He was so even-handed with the way he treated both sides, that he was accused by the Greeks of being a ‘barbarian lover’. Christian historians took a different view. Our old fri...

When did the decline in an interest in the classics start to emerge in the West? It possibly started with Basil. Basil of Caesarea Basil was an influential bishop from Cappadocia, Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Died in the late 4th century. He was born into a wealthy family, raised a Christian by his mother, after his father was martyred before Constantine’s edict. He got a classical education, f...

* Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Deuteronomy 12:2-3 * I...

How St Augustine provided the ultimate Christian justification for acts of violence – Jesus did it first and it’s okay as long as you do it with love. * Still talking about Augustine and his “City Of God” * Last time we looked his theory that God knowing certain women deserved to be raped. * But the majority of the book is his way of saying “Look, Rome was a horrible place with l...

Augustine said he heard a childlike voice he heard telling him to “take up and read” which he took as a divine command to open the Bible and read the first thing he saw. He opened the bible at a random page and read from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapter 13, verses 13 and 14: Let’s behave decently, as people who live in the light of day. No wild parties, drunkenness, sexual im...

* Let’s talk more about Augustine of Hippo, aka St Augustine. * He’s one of the most important figures in all of Christianity. * Through his sheer intellectual power, and enormous output of work , he has come to be seen as the cornerstone of the western Christian tradition. * it has been said that anyone who claims to have read all of Augustine’s works must be lying * And a lot of the stuff he cam...

After three days of pillage, Alaric left Rome. * Instead of heading for Ravenna, he headed for southern Italy. * He took with him lots of gold and hostages, including Honorius’ sister, the daughter of Theodosius. * They sacked many cities in southern Italy and were preparing to go on to Sicily and Africa when Alaric died of an illness, just a few months after the sack. * According to legend, he wa...

Stilicho and the chief ministers of his party were treacherously slain on Honorius’ orders. * Stilicho had been accused by one of his enemies at court, Olympius, of treason and wanting to put his own son on the throne. * So Stilicho went to Ravenna to meet with the Emperor to protest his innocence. * Honorius, now believing the rumors of Stilicho’s treason, ordered his arrest. * Stilicho sou...

⁃ Theodosius’ army rapidly dissolved after his death. ⁃ And as he apparently hadn’t given the Goths the rewards they expected for helping him defeat Eugenius at the Battle of the Frigidus, they decided to just TAKE their rewards – and more. ⁃ As his heir in the East, Theodosius left his son Arcadius, who was then about eighteen years old, and in the West his son Honorius, who was ten....